Earlier in the morning, I heard Gen. Anthony Zinni on the Dianne Rehm show. He described one occasion, in the 90s, when he was opposed to the Iraq Liberation Act and the support of Ahmed Chalabi, and William Cohen, who was then Secretary of Defense, and who disagreed with him, nonetheless brought him personally to meet with various Congressional leaders on the grounds that they ought to hear what Zinni had to say. I thought: yes, that's exactly what people who were concerned with the good of the country, as opposed to winning at any cost, would do: they would bring people who disagreed with them, but whose views they respected, to meet with decision-makers, in order to be sure that they heard both sides of the story. It's also what anyone who respected Congress as an equal branch of government would do.

I sometimes worry that we will get used to the levels of mendacity that we've seen from this administration: that we will stop remembering that it is not normal for administrations to lie to Congress on a regular basis, to suppress all dissenting points of view, or to try to game the system so that their preferred outcome prevails. Some of this, I imagine, always happens; but I think we should never forget that it has not always been the norm, and we should never, ever get used to it.